


Alea Iacta Est

by city_burns_guilt



Category: Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
Genre: F/F, Kink Meme, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:42:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/city_burns_guilt/pseuds/city_burns_guilt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sue reads Maud's books, and discovers something Maud might have preferred to keep hidden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alea Iacta Est

**Author's Note:**

> See [ Femslash Kink Meme](http://femslash-kink.dreamwidth.org/). Inspired by the work of someone else who will certainly know what I mean when I say that. I would also like to apologize to the Victorians for playing into the stereotype that they were all repressed perverts who had kinky sex laced with weird class issues all the time. I understand that sometimes they also made tea.

There are any number of moments in which it strikes her how wrong it is, she and Sue, together as they are. Sometimes she closes a book too quickly when Sue wanders by her desk, or flushes guiltily at something she reads when they're preparing for bed, and Sue will give her that look, the one that reminds Maud of the thousand reasons they have not to trust each other—of the thousand reasons she's given Sue not to trust her.

And sometimes there are other looks, the ones that seem caught between skeptical and knowing, the ones Sue gives her or, worse, casts down at the floor when Maud says certain things, stares a certain way, touches a little too roughly. These she sees often, now—far more often than before.

Things had been different when Sue first returned to Briar. For Maud, simply having her there, being able to touch her, to say the things she had waited to say, to love her openly (or as openly as one could ever do such a thing)—it was enough. The thing that gripped her chest when she watched Sue dozing peacefully in the early afternoon or lying flushed and breathless in their bed overwhelmed whatever other urges urges lay coiled inside of her, made them still and dormant.

But sleeping things wake, eventually.

This one had yawned and stretched slowly: nails dug too firmly into hipbones once; hands fisted too tightly in hair; rebukes—all of them far too harsh, too stern—issued when Sue neglected some aspect of the house, forgot some task. Small things. Once, when Sue was writhing beneath her, straining against her hand, Maud had leaned down before she knew what she was about, closed her teeth around Sue's pulse point so sharply that Sue gasped with surprise. Sue's hips had bucked then, a gesture perhaps intended to throw Maud off, but she refused to be moved, just curled her fingers more sharply and relished in the quickening of Sue's heartbeat beneath her lips. Afterwards, when Sue had caught her breath, she stared hard at Maud for a moment, reached up and gingerly fingered the marks on her neck. She'd rolled over then—not fast enough that Maud failed to notice the way she cringed, just a little—blew out the candle on the night table, and feigned sleep.

Sue had worn a high-collared dress the next day, and they hadn't talked about it. In fact, they had barely spoken about anything for most of the daylight hours. Sue moved about the study arranging papers, quills, and Maud stared at the cover of the book she refused to open to avoid looking at Sue and tried to swallow the lump in her throat.

“Is that what you like, then?” Sue asked, finally, when night had fallen and they were settled in bed. “Hurting me?” She turned to peer at Maud, and even in the darkness her eyes glistened with something unidentifiable. Sadness, maybe.

 _You know nothing_ , Maud had told her once, that first day they'd seen each other again. _You don't know me at all_. She would give almost anything, she thinks, for that to hold true still.

“No,” she says quietly, and wishes that were true as well. “No, it isn't like that.”

There's a long moment in which Sue just watches her, considers before she says, simply, “You must think me so stupid.”

“No,” Maud exhales, sharply and with relief about the fact that this, at least, is not a lie. “I have never thought that. I could never think that.”

Sue scoffs, but there's little malice behind it. “You just thought that I wouldn't see it, then? The way you always close that book when I bring your meals? When I straighten the things on your desk?”

Maud feels her face grow hot immediately, but cannot bring herself to answer.

“Or did you want me to see?” Sue asks, the curiosity in her tone not quite genuine. “Needed me to know what you were? What those books have made of you?”

“No,” Maud repeats. Her lips mouth the word again. She feels as if all of language has become that one syllable, that anything else is beyond her.

“I opened it,” Sue continues, and Maud feels something fierce and dreadful contract within her. “Couldn't read much of it—don't see those words, often, do I?” She laughs a little ruefully before continuing. “But the drawings were... enough.”

“I'm sorry,” Maud says, immediately, forcefully. She doesn't know what she means by it, just knows that she is. Sue does not deserve this, should not be saddled with all the things she had hoped never to become.

Sue ignores the apology. “Read it to me,” she tells her. Her voice is flat, but there's something unrecognizable in it, and Maud's eyes go wide.

“Sue. I--”

“I want to know what it says.”

Maud is trembling now, can feel it everywhere, and Sue must be able to as well because something in her demeanor softens, just slightly. But she refuses to retreat, to be merciful. She reaches a hand out to tip Maud's chin up, to force her to look at her. “Are you going to fetch it, or shall I?”

Maud gets up on shaky legs, makes her way to the study and collects the book that feels far heavier in her arms than its size grants it any right to. She carrier is back slowly, sits on the end of the bed and waits.

“Read,” Sue orders evenly.

Maud clenches her jaw, tries to relieve the dryness in her mouth, to keep her voice from trembling. “What would you like to hear?”

Sue laughs shortly, almost mockingly, but seems to reconsider when she sees the way Maud flinches. “Which ones do you read, then?” she asks, voice gentler than Maud would expect.

“I don't--”

“The one you read most.”

The book opens to the page almost automatically, and Maud flushes again, clears her throat and forces herself to speak. It sounds surprisingly ugly, out loud. When she gets to the part in which the maid is settled over the desk, her mistress's hand pressed firm against the small of her back to keep her still while the lash comes down again and again, she cringes, stutters over the words until she finally has to stop to take in a long, shuddering breath.

Sue lets her pause for a moment, but does not relent. “Go on, then.”

Maud continues, speaks haltingly about fingertips skimming over freshly-raised weals, moving lower to dip between thighs. She trails off before the the story ends, but Sue does not seem to notice.

“Another,” she says, voice rough with someone Maud cannot identify, and Maud obeys, turns the pages aimlessly this time and begins reading of a gentleman taking his young charge over his lap, bringing the hairbrush down again and again on her rapidly-coloring bottom and thighs.

When Maud finishes, she swallows hard and fixes her eyes on a spot a few feet in front of her on the floor. “I'm sorry,” she repeats, but as before, Sue ignores it, remains silent.

“These girls,” she begins finally, her voice more tentative than it has been up to this point. “Are they meant to enjoy it?”

Maud looks up at her. She knows her gaze must be questioning, for she is uncertain as to whether Sue actually wants the answer or is merely posing the question to highlight the ridiculousness of the notion that such cruelties could ever be pleasant. But Sue mistakes it for a lack of comprehension, clarifies, “The beatings. Are they meant to enjoy them?”

Maud cringes. “Sometimes, yes,” she answers, softly. “Other times--” she trails off, shakes her head. “I don't read those.”

“Don't you?” Sue asks, and Maud looks up at her helplessly from under her lashes, sees Sue's face curious and skeptical.

“No. They are not what I—” She cannot bring herself to say it aloud, though it is truth and she has known it for longer than she can acknowledge. It matters little, though. Sue fills it in for her.

“Like?”

Maud nods miserably, ashamedly, and Sue sighs. She's lost some of her edge, of whatever has driven her to interrogate Maud thus far, and she considers Maud with something resembling pity for several long moments.

“Once, then,” she says, finally, and Maud's head snaps up in confusion.

“Once,” Sue repeats, meeting her gaze. “Show me what there is in it.”

“Never.” Maud's exhale is harsh. “Never. I could not--”

“I want to see,” Sue says, simply, and gives the statement finality by blowing out the candle on the night table, leaving Maud in darkness.

Maud ends up rifling through the night table hours later, to procure the drops she has not had to employ in months. She nearly swallows the bottle-full, and it is hardly enough to bring sleep.

\---

She rises early the next morning in order to escape before Sue wakes and makes her way to the study, spends the hour leading up to daylight clutching her pen. But so seized is she with a feeling bordering on dread that any efforts at actual writing prove futile, and she ends up smoothing her hands over the paper over and over again. She tries not to cast any glances at _that_ book, the one which she had hoped never to read aloud and which had betrayed her so thoroughly last evening. She tells herself she should not think of it—should not let her mind wander to how Sue will look at her now that she has caught a glimpse of the thing Maud carries within—but she fails. She has the sudden urge to flee, to run through the fields of Briar, to chill her febrile brain in the coolness of the river, or at least drink from it until she forgets. But her limbs feel heavy, far too heavy to move her from the desk or out of the room she has long considered a prison.

Maud hears the sounds of Sue rising long before she hears her footsteps begin moving about the house, and a hard lump of anxiety takes root somewhere in her belly. She does not want this confrontation, not now, but it is inevitable. And so she stays, waits.

When Sue finally makes her way to the study and finds Maud seated there, she fixes her with a brief, annoyed glare but says nothing as she sets the breakfast tray down. She wastes no time in busying herself with straightening a stack of papers that Maud had scattered in her carelessness (or perhaps her recklessness the night before), and her face is open and calm with no sign of vexation. She behaves, in other words, as though nothing is different, and Maud cannot help but feel a sudden rush of gratitude and relief at the knowledge that she does not think her a complete monster. Yet, she is clever enough to understand that this is not _right_ somehow, the incongruity of this strange casualness with the weight of their last conversation. Some part of it is amiss.

The longer she spends feigning concentration on the blank page in front of her, the clearer this becomes. Sue lingers more than usual, makes a more obtrusive fuss over various items. And, after a few moments of shuffling stacks of sheets and books that were hardly in need of the treatment, she begins to hum a soft, flat tune that appears, Maud thinks, to have no more than three notes repeating in an endless succession, over and over, over and over.

When Maud can no longer conceal her irritation after a few minutes of such carrying on, she raises her head and looks pointedly at Sue, but Sue pays her no mind, just continues in her business of seemingly unwitting hovering. Maud's annoyance grows more insistent, then, for she has never been able abide distractions during her working hours. Single-minded concentration was a habit trained into her well by her uncle, and, like so many other habits she learned intentionally or unintentionally under his tutelage, she has not been able to abandon it. Sue is well aware of this, was trained into being an unobtrusive presence in the study long before the two of them were ever lovers. And yet, now--

Maud returns her gaze to the paper with an unsubtle sigh, dips her pen in the inkwell and writes a few nonsense words in script far too delicate for the meanings she conveys. It is not until Sue begins straightening the edges of books, lining up quills that Maud finally snaps. “Tell me, for what reason do I employ servants if not to clean and tidy my things?”

Sue freezes for a second, rolls her eyes when she finally looks up. She glares back at Maud.

“Sorry, Miss,” she says, in a tone that makes it clear that she is not. She emphasizes the last word, and something in her tone is enough to make Maud blush with shame despite her conviction that the annoyance she directed at Sue was justified. “I'll be going, then.”

Sue mock curtsies as she turns and leaves, and Maud belatedly notes playfulness undermining the coldness in her voice, and a hint of defiance as well. It occurs quite suddenly, then, what this was, what it was meant to elicit.

A provocation, all of it a provocation.

The surge of irritation and... something hits Maud hard enough that she has to struggle to swallow it down, and she presses her pen into the paper so hard that the ink bleeds into the next several sheets. She realizes this too late, however, for in the seconds that follow Sue's departure, she is struck with a wave of images so potent that her mind seizes: Sue with her underclothes pushed up around her waist, bent over the desk. The heat of her flesh when Maud presses into her from behind, claps a hand over her mouth and whispers chastisements for being so wantonly, carelessly loud. Sue dropping to her knees in front of Maud and hissing low and pained when she settles back onto her ankles, only to recover a moment later and--

Maud moves the pen, begins to write for the first time in days. Sue has always been a sort of fleam, cutting to the quick of her and bringing to the surface all the things that are usually content to rush quietly inside. It is thus no surprise, she thinks, that it is Sue who makes everything bleed out of her now, makes her fill pages with the words that she has longed to say but never acknowledged as her own until this moment.

She is so focused that she finds herself surprised when Sue pushes the door open, offers a perfunctory apology for being late with dinner as she sets the tray on the desk. Maud barely looks up from her work, just nods at Sue and continues to write. Anything else, she thinks, will break her. But only a moment passes before she catches something dark out of the corner of her eye, something that appears to moving quickly.

Ink, she realizes, and makes a surprised sound as she jumps back, hastens to clear her stack of papers from the path of the rapidly-expanding puddle. The motion startles Sue, who jerks her head up and then moves immediately to right the inkpot that she'd upended with the dinner tray.

“Shit,” Sue says, and then cringes at her own language as she grabs for the napkin to stop the mess from spreading further. “Sorry, I--”

A thought occurs to Maud, when the initial surprise of it has faded, and she feels a sudden flash of anger.

“Was that on purpose, then?” she accuses. Her voice is dangerous, and Sue's eyes go wide.

“Of course not--”

She moves around the desk so quickly that Sue flinches. “Do you think I don't know, Sue, what this morning was? What you were about?”

“No--” She looks as though she wishes to argue further, but after a moment she closes her mouth, and defensiveness fades to something else. She cocks her head as her eyes meet Maud's.

“So why don't you do it, then?” she asks, curiously.

Maud is speechless for a moment before she feels her nostrils flare, and Sue raises her hands, immediately clarifies, “I meant it: the ink was just a slip. But before...”

Her eyes gleam with something, and she continues,“You want to. I can see it. So why won't you?”

Maud doesn't know how to begin answering. She grabs the napkin out of Sue's hand, snaps, “Just go. Tell one of the servants to bring me rags.”

Sue seems torn between blushing in embarrassment, rolling her eyes, and casting Maud a pitying look, and she hesitates for a moment. But she must see something in Maud's face, for she begins to back away. “Sorry,” she repeats, softly, as she pulls the door shut behind her.

Maud takes her seat again and stares at the large black stain with no small amount of annoyance, until she surprises herself after a few minutes with the feeling of her lips curling into a smile. She should be angrier, she supposes; it is a fine desk and its finish will almost certainly be damaged beyond repair. But she could see that Sue did not mean it, and, anyway, she cannot bring herself to mourn it much. It seems somehow appropriate, the large, dark stain marring the surface. _A commemoration of the work it has witnessed in its tenure at Briar_ , Maud thinks, and laughs shortly as she dips her pen into the puddle, goes back to writing.

When Anne meekly enters the study carrying a stack of cloths, Maud gestures towards the end of the desk. “There is fine.”

“Oh, and Anne?” She adds, when the girl is almost to the door. She hesitates for a moment when she realizes what she is about to do, about to put into play. In the end, though, she cannot stop herself. “Tell Sue I wish to eat late tonight.”

“Yes, Miss,” Anne says with a short nod, and departs.

She barely touches the food Sue left, just soaks up what she can of the ink and continues to work until the light in the study grows low. She rises to get a candle then, and sets it close to her on the desk as she reads over what she has written. She is used to her own stories seeming foreign when she returns to them months after their completion, but today's product has that strange quality instilled in it all ready, as if it poured out from a place scarcely known to her conscious mind. It is probably her best work, she thinks, somewhat ruefully since she doubts that it would attract many buyers on Holywell Street. She doesn't know if she would sell it to them if it would.

She hears the sound of the door a few moments after she has finished, when she has more or less resigned herself to waiting. Sue comes in carrying yet another tray of food that will barely be touched, and places it carefully on the desk.

Maud eyes her the entire time but say nothing, just leaves her to stand, awkward and uncomfortable, when she has completed her task. She lets the tension hang for a long moment, then asks in what she hopes is a neutral tone, “Have the servants retired?”

“Yes,” Sue says, a little tentatively. “Except for Mr. Griggs, but he's out in the stable.”

“I see.”

She stares for long moments at Sue, who wrings her hands before she catches herself at it. After awhile, she bites her lip asks a little shakily, “Are you going to do it, then?”

“Yes,” Maud replies. It is only a syllable, but the look it produces on Sue's face is the most curious mix of relief, curiosity, and fear that Maud has ever seen. It sparks something in her, sends something rumbling in her gut.

“What should I--”

She has thought about this for so long and in so many iterations that it is odd to be faced with the choice now, but she does not hesitate. “The hairbrush. Fetch it.”

Sue's eyes widen, and Maud swears she can see her throat work even from across the room. But she nevertheless nods and retreats from the study. Maud listens to the sound of her footfalls on the stairs, the sound of her rummaging on the dresser, and feels anticipation of a kind she has scarcely experienced previously.

When Sue returns with the brush, Maud rises to meet her, takes it gently from her hand and sets it on the desk. Sue looks at her questioningly, but Maud just brushes the backs of her fingers against Sue's cheek, hushes her before leaning in for a kiss.

She surprises herself with how softly she brushes her lips over Sue's, how languidly their mouths move against one another. She had imagined that if ever she received such an opportunity as this, she would, when the time came, lapse into the unthinking forcefulness that so often accompanies fierce desire. But now, amidst the actualization of what she had believed doomed to remain only a thought, she finds herself wanting to savor details--to take everything in, to be intentional.

After she breaks away from Sue, panting, she lets her hands drift to the buttons on her dress. Her eyes meet Sue's as she fingers the top the one, and they find there a such a curious mix of uncertainty and something that Maud is tempted to recognize as wanting that she feels her chest contract. She is tempted to lean forward, to claim Sue's lips with her own again, but she stops herself.

Instead, she asks, “Are you frightened?”

Her tone is casual, as if she were inquiring about the weather or the state of someone's business, but the roughness of her voice gives her away.

“A bit,” Sue admits, and lowers her eyes.

Maud hesitates, then, her fingers lingering over the button, but Sue just brings her own hands up, covers Maud's and helps her to undo it. Maud gives her a short smile and takes her time thereafter, fingering each of them, easing them open slowly. Letting the anticipation of this build.

When they are all undone, Sue raises her arms, helps Maud pull the dress over her head. Maud tries not to remember how she learned this motion—dressing Sue so that those men would take her for something she wasn't—and instead focuses on the chemise. She feels herself flush as soon as it is removed, muses about how foreign it remains after all this time, the way her breath catches whenever she is allowed to look at Sue this way. She finds before she realizes it that she has brought her hand up, skimmed in up Sue's side and along her ribs. Sue shivers when her fingers reach the curve of her breast, but Maud does not allow herself to go any further. There will be time for that.

She takes Sue's hand in hers and guides her wordlessly over to the desk. For a moment when she reaches the chair, she merely stares at Sue, watches as she fidgets, nervous, nearly naked, and apparently waiting for further direction. When Maud sits down and fixes her with a pointed look, however, Sue comes to the side of the chair without prompting.

“Shall I...” she asks, nervously, and makes a motion as if to bend over Maud's knees.

“Your drawers,” Maud reminds, and Sue blushes as she rises again, begins fiddling with the drawstring.

“Do you want them off, or...”

Maud's throat feels tight to the point where it is difficult to speak, but she manages. “Around your knees.”

Sue bites her lip but does as she's told. As with before, Maud's breath catches at the sight of her exposed so, but she does not let herself dwell on it to too great a degree. She pats her lap, and Sue's blush deepens before she settles herself over it.

Despite Sue's obvious tension and stiffness, the sight alone is enough to cause the fire in Maud's belly, smoldering since she cast the die that afternoon, to roar to life, and she has to struggle to suppress a moan. She runs her hand over Sue's thighs and up along her bottom, skims the tips of her fingers over the curve—the spot she knows from books and from Sue's caresses to be among the most sensitive—until she feels Sue exhale shakily and shudder under the touch.

“The hand first, I think,” Maud murmurs as she rests the flat of her palm against Sue. Sue exhales—in relief or anticipation Maud cannot tell—and gives a short nod of agreement.

Sue sucks in a hard breath when the first blow falls, but Maud thinks it must be more from anxiety than pain because the slap is hardly more than an experiment. The spanks that follow are not much firmer—just taps, really. Just enough to start what Maud regards as a rather lovely blush forming on pale skin and to let Sue, who is still tense and clenching in between each slap, to get used to the feel of them.

And she does. After a minute or so, Maud notes that she begins to relax a bit, to breathe with the rhythm of the blows—to submit herself, Maud thinks, and immediately feels the echo of the realization between her thighs.

“Yes,” she says, her voice strained with arousal. “Yes.” She murmurs it without thinking, without meaning to direct it at Sue, but Sue whimpers anyway, presses her thighs together. Maud mirrors the motion automatically and chokes back a groan at the resultant throb of pleasure.

After a second's recovery, she pats Sue with the hand she has resting on her lower back. “Good. A little more now.”

The next slap is the first that is strong enough to cause more than mild discomfort, and Sue cries out when it lands. Maud, however, only shushes her, brings her hand down again and again. The increase in force is only incremental, but Sue nonetheless begins to squirm and whimper with some regularity as the blows fall in a steady, slow rhythm. Maud's palm begins to sting, but she pays it no mind. She can focus on little beyond that fact that she can feel every shaky breath, every small moan that slips past Sue's lips in the pit of her stomach.

She wishes that she could relish them, and, indeed, she allows herself to for a few moments. But the two of them are hardly alone in the house. She shushes Sue again, more roughly than she intends, and grips her around the waist to hold her steady for another set of slow, firm spanks, all directed at the same spot. She feels Sue buck slightly, ankles kicking up, but she doesn't realize that Sue is is holding her breath until she hears the pained sigh when the last blow falls.

“You must breathe,” Maud tells her, gently, and pauses to run her her hand over the now-deep-pink flesh. The skin is so warm that it nearly burns, and Maud presses down slightly, enjoys the sting of its heat combined with that of her palm. Sue hisses when she does it, jerks as if anticipating another blow, but Maud just murmurs a calming sound and continues to stroke her, occasionally running her fingertips over the curve of her bottom and down over her inner thigh. A part of her longs to move her fingers higher, to discover the degree to which this particular enjoyment is mutual, but another part tells her that she would not know what to do with the answer were it not the one she hoped for. So she hesitates, runs her fingers in ever expanding circles but never quite allows them to find a destination.

“I am.”

Sue says it so softly that Maud wonders if she misheard, but Sue repeats it, spreads her thighs a bit more and presses her hips back the fraction of an inch that it takes for Maud to be touching her.

Maud sucks in a breath so sharply that it seems to echo in the largeness of the room. She can't resist letting her fingers stray, run up and down the wetness between Sue's legs until Sue moans softly and presses her hips into Maud's lap.

She takes her hand away quickly, then, and makes a sound of mock-disappointment. “Shameful,” she says as she wipes her fingers across the small of Sue's back. Sue lowers her head, and Maud reaches toward the desk. “The hairbrush, then.”

Sue lets out a whimper that quickly turns into a gasp when Maud touches the cool, flat of the brush against her bottom. She tries automatically to squirm away, but Maud grabs one of her arms, presses it towards her spine.

“Hold the chair leg with your other hand,” Maud tells her as she taps the brush against Sue a few times. “You mustn't reach back.”

As soon as Sue follows her command, Maud raises her arm, brings the hairbrush down with a crack that resounds almost obscenely loudly in the quiet of the study. It makes Sue cry out again, loudly, but Maud does not bother with futile corrections this time. Instead, she brings down a small grouping of blows before pausing to appraise her handiwork.

It is curious, she thinks, how quickly the hairbrush has deepened the pinkish-red blush, made Sue squirm and writhe and gasp. When she raises her arm again, lets the brush graze the top of Sue's thigh when it falls, Sue bucks hard and nearly sobs.

“Please,” she begs as Maud raises her arm again, gives the other side the same treatment. Sue hisses before continuing, “Please, I'm sorry.”

“I know you are,” Maud says, gently, and moves the brush over a bit, takes aim again at the curve of her bottom. As soon as she feels it, Sue jerks, begins to beg again.

“Please, no.”

Maud freezes as soon as the word is uttered, loosens her hold on Sue's arm and waits. But Sue makes no attempt to move or to squirm away, just lays somewhat limply over her lap and breathes so hard and fast that it sounds like sobbing.

“Just a little bit more,” Maud tells her. She doesn't phrase it as a question, but it is and Sue knows it. It isn't until she sees Sue's short nod and the way her knuckles go white as they grip the leg of the chair harder that she carries on, giving Sue a number of slow, hard spanks that move down her bottom toward her legs.

Maud lets the brush linger against the last spot on which it fell, suddenly overtaken by the memory of the “gentleman” in yesterday's story, who insisted that his charge spread herself so that he might get at the tender flesh of her inner thighs. She would not dare ask for it, but it the thought alone makes her shiver.

As it turns out, she doesn't have to ask. Sue knows. She always knows. After taking a deep, shaky breath, she parts her legs, tenses in anticipation.

Maud can't contain the moan that arises from somewhere deep in her chest, then, for she cannot remember a time when she was so torn between deep, aching want and affection. The first crack of the brush on Sue's thigh makes her arch almost off Maud's lap, but she settles again after a moment and accepts its twin on the other side with only a small sob. Maud feels the reverberations of between her own legs, and is tempted to continue, to draw it out just a little longer.

But Sue has endured enough for the evening.

“All done,” she says as she replaces the brush on the desk and begins to rub Sue's back gently. The gesture—or perhaps just the relief that comes with knowing her suffering is over—is enough to break Sue, who lets out the tears and the small, wracking sobs that she had managed to contain for the duration of the punishment. Maud whispers soothing, nonsensical thing and keeps her over her lap until her sniffling stops and she catches her breath.

When Sue seems able enough to rise, Maud attempts to help her. But it proves difficult and awkward, as Sue is still somewhat limp and off-balance and she herself is nearly drunk with arousal. She ends up wavering and stumbling forward into Sue, who takes a compensating step back only to hiss as backs of her thighs hit the edge of the desk. Maud has to grab the edge of the desk to brace herself, and she finds their faces only inches apart when she looks up, meets Sue's eyes.

“Do you want me to—the corner, I mean?” Sue says, softly, and Maud nearly moans again as she flashes back to the story, to the way the well-punished girl had been led to the corner, made to stand there for a quarter of an hour with her bottom exposed so that she might reflect on what had just transpired. The thought of Sue doing it sends an almost paralyzing wave of arousal coursing through her, but--

“No,” she tells Sue, and crushes their lips together for a second before pulling back, already breathless, and murmuring, “No, I cannot wait.”

She does not break the kiss as she reaches down to curve her hands around Sue's hips and, with strength she scarcely knew she possessed, lifts Sue the short distance onto the desk. The soft cry she emits when she's set down on the cool, hard surface is enough to make Maud nearly delirious with it, and she has the sudden urge to drop to her knees, to press her face forward until all she can feel, smell, taste is a Sue. She gives into the impulse without hesitation, and Sue lets out a gasp of surprise that turns immediately to a pained hiss when Maud's hands find the backs of her thighs, lift her legs up over her shoulders.

It's only a second, however, before the hiss transforms into a groan of pleasure, and the hand not employed in keeping her upright on the desk finds its way into Maud's hair.

It is not often that Maud gets the opportunity to do this. Sue has the modesty of a lady of a better class than that in which she was raised, and the naivety of one as well. The first time Maud had licked and nipped her way down her belly, placed an open-mouthed kiss on her cunt, Sue had jerked away, startled, and asked her if people really did things like that. But Sue had never known how to deny her anything, not for long, and whatever alarm or disgust she might have felt initially faded with exposure. But she still blushes furiously whenever Maud suggests it, and practically squirms with embarrassment unless she's already too far gone to bother with self-consciousness.

Tonight, however, she is—further than Maud has ever seen her, in fact. The hand threaded that's roughly though Maud's hair pulls her closer, traps her, moves with her as her head bobs smoothly between her legs. Every time Maud drags the flat of her tongue across her clit, or flicks it just inside, Sue's hips arch up only to hit the desk again with a faint slap that's echoed by her gasps and moans. It hits Maud so hard she feels dizzy, has to squeeze her thighs together rhythmically just to ease the ache a little.

Sue begins to murmur something from above her, and it takes Maud a moment to realize that it's _please_ , repeated over and over again in a string interrupted only by the occasionally broken groan. Maud moves her hands, then, brings one up to Sue's breast to tease and pinch at her nipple while the other pushes inside of her with two fingers. Sue moans so loudly that it occurs to Maud even in her addled state to hope that the door is locked, but she cannot actually bring herself to dwell on the thought. She wraps her lips around Sue's clit, sucks with purpose until she feels Sue tighten around her fingers so forcefully that they feel as though they're being crushed. Everything feels as though it is being crushed down when they do this--condensed into nothing but the moment, their bodies, their pleasures.

When Sue's tension finally fades, she limply tugs Maud up to her. Maud smiles—a little embarrassed now that whatever beastly impulse has been driving her to this point has loosened its grasp—and moves a hand up to wipe at her face. But Sue simply swats it away, does what she never has before and presses her lips to Maud's, kisses herself off of them. Maud moans, and Sue muffles it, licks her way into Maud's mouth until they're both gasping for breath. Maud is panting so hard by the time Sue breaks the kiss that her chest aches, and she imagines that the look of bafflement on Sue's face—the one that asks what devil it is that has seized them both—is mirrored in her own.

Sue regains her poise faster, however. After only a moment, she looks at Maud slyly, flashes her a small smile. “Is this the part where I offer you my mouth in gratitude for your taking the time to chastise me properly?”

Maud nearly moans, but something else occurs to her. She looks at Sue curiously. “I didn't read you that part.”

Sue tries to contain her smile. “No.”

Maud frowns, then glares at her accusingly. “You said you couldn't read it.”

“I said I couldn't read the first part,” Sue corrects, no longer able to stifle her grin as she kneels in front of Maud, begins to gather up her skirts. “But the end... well, I know those words, don't I?”


End file.
